Craft Space Creativity!!

Well hi there! How lucky you are to see me posting TWICE within 24 hours. LOL My legs are hurting very badly tonight from my fibromyalgia. I just took some lyrica but I probably won't sleep much tonight. I just told my very crafty bff sis Leslie that it feels like firecrackers are going off inside my legs!!

Anyhow, I'm going to write a tad and give y'all some pics!! So, I'm going to put a jump break in here, just clicky below to go to the page with the full posting. :)
Enjoy, and comments are ALWAYS welcomed!!




So, I have SO many ideas of things to do with my scrap space, but money is really my ONLY restriction. Because I don't have any money to spend on good storage items, or items to "spiffy" up my space I end up recycling many household items and I have even gotten a couple of things off my local Freecycle Group. I am owner of the group... if you'd like to join a Freecycle group in your area, check out Freecycle.org to search for a group near you!

Last month my ma and daddy sent me some really neat containers from my daddy's shop, but they took a LOT of cleaning to get to the cleanliness they needed to be in order to be used. They mainly just had a TON of dirt packed onto and into them and some writing in permenant marker. They are really neat and I have TONS of Ideas for using them! You can see them here in 3 pics...

These are the bins...

These are the small containers.

To get them clean, I soaked them in a hot tub with 10 cups of bleach (boy did the back of my house smell like bleach!!), I then rinsed them in very cold water, then very hot water, and I put them in the clothes washer on a cold cycle with 2 cap fulls of laundry detergent. Since they are just little [VERY THICK] plastic square cups, I figured it wouldn't do any harm, and it didn't! After putting them through the washer with laundry soap, I soaked them in the tub with 2 cups of bleach again, did another washer cycle and then finally put them in the dishwasher. As a final wash, I hand scrubbed them with a brand new scrubbing sponge and THEN hand cleaned each of them with Mr. Clean Magic Erasers just to be sure all the extra residue was off. Because my daddy works in a tool repair shop, there was lots of dirt, grime and a little oil on a couple of them. I did my best to pick out the ones that didn't have "that" type of residue.

They ended up coming out very clean, though still  discolored, I am assuming from years of use. Some came more white than the others and some stayed a little yellow. The only thing that I couldn't get off completely was the marker stain. It came off the top layer, but you can still see the stain of the marker on some of them.

My plan is to paint the red outer containers with cute colors (most likely pink, teal, purple and gray) and then cover the smaller white containers with scrapbooking deco paper. I REALLY want to get a die that makes "tabs" like file folder tabs, so that I can attach those to the little tab pieces on the containers. But, being short of money, that isn't possible right now... (if you have a "tab" die, let me know, I can send you some paper (and a gift) to cut me some tabs!! I'd be so extremely grateful!)
That would be helpful. In all I have 10 of these bins, and each bin holds 8 smaller containers. So, I have a LOT of potential for storage space. Even though these are smaller bins, they are going to be perfect for holding chipboard, stickers, small sets of rub ons, flowers, buttons, and any smaller sized embellishments that can come out of their packages.

My daddy has some bigger ones, and my ma said she is giving my daddy some bigger containers for paper and scrap paper, so he can send them to me. He gets SUPER discounted UPS shipping at work, almost free, it's cause of the type of business he does and the shipping they just pay one flat fee for so many boxes/lbs... something that would normally cost 20 to mail costs about 6 bucks, so he is able to ship bigger boxes to me.

I just want to be able to have a space that I can move around in, and work freely without tripping over things. I want my walk in closet to be a space that is VERY neat, clean and organized. Oh, speaking of closets... last month, when my hubby's brother was over, we had him help hubby take stuff OUT of my walk in closet and to the storage shed. Basically, I was sharing the walk in closet in this room with some extra boxes and stuff that really needed to be moved out to storage, but with hubby's back and spinal issues, he can't lift anything over 10 lbs. So, his brother did it for us!

So, here are some before and after pics of my walk in closet. I warn you now... it is VERY bad! I am extremely ashamed of how bad I let it get, lol. As you can see, the before picture was horrible... granted, that was only the "floor" and my "shelf". I am really ashamed of how bad it got, but after my accident this february, I just couldn't do a ton of moving around to move stuff and organize more, so anything I took out that got used, just got thrown into a basket or box on the floor or where ever I could find space to toss it, lol (I'm sure we are all guilty of that at some point!)... none of these pics show what the back of the closet looked like. it was literally stacked from floor to top shelf and then top shelf to ceiling with boxes and crap.

Here are the BEFORE pics...
Here is the floor of the closet... boxes and bags of stuff!!

 

Here are the shelves from my big plastic stacking shelf unit...

Here are the AFTER PICS...

Now, I have my shelf in the back and a couple hanging organizers. As you can see, on the right, I have a small rolling shelf, I just have stuff set on there for now, but that will all be organized into my bins and hanging organizers so that I can use that to put stuff on and roll into the living room if I want to work in there (I can open the curtains on the other side of the house). On the LEFT side of the wall, it's all bare. I really want to put a 3 1/2 by 3 feet peg board up there, I think that is a great utilization of the space!! I've done a little bit more organizing since these pics were taken, but not much. My shelves look a little more organized than they did in the final 3 pics and I now have a little more organization in my hanging organizers too. I have lots of little baskets in them holding things. :) Hopefully all the weight won't pull my wall shelves down that are in the closet. LOL that would be horrible!

This is my NEXT project... this is my craft table. as you can see, my baby bug cricut is sitting all by its lonesome on the back of the table. My ma is making a matching cover for my bigger 5" xyron, so it will be sitting back there too.

What I WANT to do is get rid of this "round" table and put an old door against the wall with some table legs on it. It would have the hole in it from the door handle, that what I could run the cords through it from my cricut and a lamp and of course, my radio and small tv. With a "square" work space, I'd have a lot more space and wouldn't have to worry about a big open space behind the table where things can fall off. this round table really was a very bad idea!!
So, as you can see, this is a huge mess. again, just stuff piled on top of it, needing to be organized and put into their proper bins and drawers. This will get done soon, I hope! LOL

Here is my over the door hanging organizer. I LOVE this thing!!! it has 96 pockets ranging from small on top, medium in the middle, large on the bottom and extra large on the very bottom. My ma got me this for christmas a few years ago and she doesn't remember where she got it. I've searched high and low on the internet and I can't find it anywhere!!!! I would give anything to have another one of this exact organizer. heck, if I could even find something very similar I'd be happy!!!

I have done a little re-arranging of this organizer. I have 2 top rows filled with pearl glue (don't know the exact name of it. LOL) and then more stickles! My stickles collection is slowly growing!! I don't have near as much as my sis Leslie, but I'm getting there!! I have added some smaller rubber stamps to a few of the pockets as well, and a couple punches that Leslie sent me. :)

 
This is my bookshelf! this was a HUGE feat to get through. I had just gotten out of the hospital, from a 2 week stay. during that time, I had a LOT of stuff come from ladies in a few groups I was in, and from a couple of my pen pals. My ma had also sent me quite a bit of stuff during that time. most of it got piled up on my shelves waiting for me to get home and have fun opening all my pressies!!!

Here is the before...

 and this is the after...

Since working on my shelf, I have re-arranged it quite a bit. I actually have a MUCH better system going... I'll take some pics this week and get them posted.


Well, I guess I've blabbed on enough and shared enough pics. I hope that you can see I've tried to give some inspiration and ideas through my messy space. LOL


If you have some ideas or input for my closet space, I'd like to hear it!



Have a great week.
Keep on scrappin' and please, be kind to one another.
~Melisa Marie